Like That Makes Sense in English

I’m going to try to write about this even though it isn’t really clear or developed or about the farm per se. But then, it is because of the farm, because of the simple life, that these things even can be thought about at all so it is too about life on the farm.

Anyway, this is something that I think I know, or am on the verge of knowing, but it is like having had a dream and upon waking remembering it clearly right up until the moment you try to remember it and then it becomes fuzzy, indistinct, surreal. All the language in the world is inadequate with which to talk about it, and yet language is all we have to try to talk about it with. Just keep in mind that none of these words are really all that accurate. Try to get the gestalt.

I grew up in a family that, altogether one and all, wanted to “be somebody” within the community. I grew up with a social conscious and wanted to “contribute”. I wanted to do something important somehow, someday. I also basically thought there was some mystery to life, some meaning, something I didn’t quite get yet. And also part of the milieu was the constancy of “what will the neighbors think”.

Now I listen to “Sunday in the 70s” on the radio and first I feel what I felt then, that there was some mystery out there and I was worthy of it. But here is what I think I know now – that there is no mystery. There is no meaning of life. There is no secret.

And that is a GOOD thing. It is thinking that there is something else, something big to do, that gets in the way of what it is, of being, of getting on with life and the universal party. It is the daily things that are the important things, not the once in a lifetime things, or even the once a year things. It is the regular, ordinary folks who are really smart and interesting, not the stars, not the in people, not the people performing on their pedestals. We are all worthy and we are all in on the secret and it is recognizing that that is a miracle. Maybe. Something like that.

We look and look hard for films to watch that highlight non-extraordinary life – a story that really could happen, a story without someone dying or the police busting in or aliens coming or superhuman qualities sprouting. A story where even nothing so extraordinary as even abuse happens, where life is smaller than life, not bigger than life. Because even when extraordinary things happen, even when children die, it is the ordinary of that that gets you, that can be transformative or debilitating or both. Those sorts of films are few and far between but often they are extraordinary when we find them. Books too.

Something extraordinary happened to me 20 years ago this week. And now, thankfully, it is nothing. Not that it was all really nothing, certainly not then and certainly not to the people most effected by it, but on another level, it is – it is just another piece of life, no more extraordinary than the cocoa my kids got with breakfast.

We are part of everything. Everything is part of us. There is nothing big. It is what it is and that is the huge thing which is nothing. Yeah, like that makes sense in English. But it does in my heart.

Then again, my raw milk cocoa is rather extraordinary. [maniacal laughter]